ALFORD, Roger (by 1530-80), of Hitcham, Bucks.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. by 1530, 1st s. of Robert Alford of London by Anne, da. of Edmund Brydges; bro. of Francis. m. c.1560, Elizabeth, da. and h. of Thomas Ramsey of Hitcham, Bucks., wid. of Nicholas Clerke of North Weston, Oxon., at least 1s. Edward  da. suc. fa. 1546.

Offices Held

Servant of Sir William Cecil from 1547; teller of receipt of Exchequer Jan. 1556-June 1562; j.p. Bucks. from c.1569; commr. sewers, Berks., Bucks., Oxon. 1567.

Biography

Alford owed his parliamentary seat in 1559 to his master Sir William Cecil (‘to no father was ever the child more bound’), who acted through his friend Sir Ambrose Cave, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. The bishops’ letters of 1564 described him as ‘earnest in religion and fit to be trusted’, and his name appears on the next surviving commission of the peace for Buckinghamshire, no doubt because of the estates he acquired at Hitcham and elsewhere in the county through his marriage. By the time of his death he also owned property at Bray and Cookham, Berkshire, and in Norfolk, Oxfordshire and Yorkshire, together with a London house at ‘the Whitefriars by Fleet Street’. In 1577 his brother Francis conveyed to him the manor of Aston-under-Edge, Gloucestershire.

Alford’s will, made in 1579, gave detailed instructions for the education of his son Edward and for his tomb, which was to be of grey marble, showing his coat of arms with his motto, ‘Try, trust and mistrust not’. His daughter Anne was to have a wardship that had been bestowed on him by his ‘good old master, rather father, the Lord Burghley, now lord treasurer of England’. Alford’s stepson (Sir) William Clerke married the recusant daughter of (Sir) John Bourne I. Alford died 16 July 1580 and was buried at Hitcham.

Vis. Glos. (Harl. Soc. xxi), 234; W. Berry, Co. Genealogies. Suss. 302; VCH Bucks. iii. 232; J. G. Alford, Alford Fam. Notes, ed. Phillimore, 25; Lansd. 18, f. 26; 118, f. 35; CPR, 1550-3, p. 310; 1555-7, p. 157; 1560-3, p. 340; 1566-9, p. 427; 1569-72, p. 219; Cam. Misc. ix(3), p. 32; Egerton 2345, f. 6; CSP Dom. 1547-80, p. 549; PCC 38 Arundell; VCH Oxon. vii. 211.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Authors: N. M. Fuidge / Alan Davidson

Notes